Many people spend considerable time planning a trip that meets their objectives for the lowest possible cost. For example, a person may want to travel from Seattle to Boston to visit family. Such a person may have considerable flexibility in both when to leave Seattle and how long to stay in Boston. Such a person may be willing to leave any day within the next 30 days at any time and stay for between three and five days in order to get the lowest fare possible. Another person may be willing to leave any day within the next week but only in the mornings and for a stay of two to six days. Such persons typically would be willing to fly on any airline. It can be, however, very difficult for them to identify the airline flight with the lowest possible fare that satisfies their objectives.
To identify an airline flight with the lowest possible fare that satisfies a person's travel objectives, the person may need to visit the web sites of several different airlines and several different airline aggregators (e.g., Orbitz). Upon visiting a web site, the person would submit a search request with a search criterion that specifies a departure location and date and a return location and date. The search criterion may specify a range of departure dates and return dates rather, than specific dates. The search criterion may also specify a preference for departure time range (e.g., 9 a.m. to 12 p.m.) and return time range. The web site then identifies the airline flights that satisfy the search criterion. If the search criterion is fairly broad, however, then it can be time-consuming to search for all the flights that satisfy the criterion. The web site provides a listing of the identified airline flights to the person that may be ordered based on ticket fare or some other criterion. In addition, the person may perform this searching for various combinations of departure locations and return locations. For example, if the person is willing to travel from Seattle to Orlando, New Orleans, Phoenix, or Los Angeles, the person may need to submit four search requests and manually correlate the results. In addition, since the search results are typically displayed in a list format, it can be difficult for a person to identify a desired flight from a long list.
Such a process is both time-consuming and tedious. Because the process is time-consuming, there is no guarantee that, upon completion of the searching, a desired airline flight will still have the same fares, will even have seats still available, or will even be found.